Israel violently bombed the Gaza Strip on Sunday, killing dozens, and killed a Lebanese Hezbollah official in a targeted raid in Beirut according to a security source.
Hezbollah media chief Mohammad Afif, who has held press conferences in recent weeks, died in the raid while he was at the Syrian Ba’ath Party offices in a building in the Ras al-Nabaa neighborhood, said this source.
The Israeli army, when questioned, did not immediately comment on this information. Israel has decimated the leadership of Hezbollah in recent months by killing its former leader Hassan Nasrallah in a strike on the southern suburbs of Beirut on September 27 as well as several military and political leaders.
Fighting on two fronts, Israel says it wants to put Hezbollah and Palestinian Hamas, allies of Iran, its sworn enemy, out of harm’s way. He vowed to destroy Hamas after the attack carried out by this Islamist movement against his territory on October 7, 2023, which triggered the war in Gaza, and seeks to stop Hezbollah’s shooting.
In the besieged and ravaged Palestinian territory of Gaza, at least 46 people have been killed in Israeli raids, according to Civil Defense spokesman Mahmoud Bassal.
“Everything shook”
The deadliest strike took place in the middle of the night in Beit Lahia (north). Twenty-six bodies have been pulled from the rubble of a targeted five-story building, “including children and women,” and at least 59 people are trapped beneath the ruins, he said.
“We heard the Israeli strike and the whole area shook. I was at home with relatives and we all thought that death was near,” Jaber Ghabayen, a relative of a family in the destroyed building, told AFP.
According to AFP images, the building was transformed into a pile of ruins. Bodies wrapped in blankets were evacuated on a cart pulled by a donkey.
The Israeli army launched a major ground operation in northern Gaza on October 6 to, according to it, prevent Hamas fighters from regrouping there.
innocent children
Twenty other Palestinians, including women and children, died in bombings in Rafah (south), Nousseirat and Al-Bureij (center), Mr. Bassal said.
Jihad Eid, who lost a nephew in the raid on a house in Al-Bureij, describes a “horrible” situation. “These were innocent children who were at home and had nothing to do with anything that was going on.”
On October 7, 2023, Hamas commandos infiltrated from the neighboring Gaza Strip carried out an attack of unprecedented scale and violence in southern Israel, which resulted in the deaths of 1,206 people, mostly civilians. , according to an AFP count based on official data, including hostages killed or died in captivity.
That day, 251 people were kidnapped. In total, 97 remain hostages in Gaza, including 34 declared dead by the army.
In response, the Israeli army launched a campaign of destructive aerial bombardments followed by a ground offensive in Gaza which left 43,846 dead, mostly civilians, according to the Hamas Ministry of Health, weakened by Israeli blows. .
Rockets on Israel
A powerful armed movement accused by its detractors of constituting a “state within a state”, Hezbollah opened a front against the Israeli army in support of Hamas on October 8, 2023.
After a year of cross-border violence, Israel moved the main war front to Lebanon, launching an intense aerial bombing campaign against Hezbollah on September 23 and a ground offensive in the south of the country on September 30.
Israel wants to distance the Lebanese movement from the border regions of southern Lebanon and stop its rocket attacks which have displaced some 60,000 residents of northern Israel.
On Sunday, the Israeli army again bombed the southern suburbs of Beirut located near the international airport, after calling on residents to evacuate areas close to “Hezbollah installations”. Strikes there destroyed a residential building near a church.
Hezbollah, for its part, fired around twenty projectiles towards the western Galilee and the Bay of Haifa in northern Israel, the army said. Some were intercepted.
More than 3,452 people have been killed in Lebanon since October 8, 2023, according to the Ministry of Health, the majority since September 23.
The only faction to retain its weapons at the end of the Lebanese civil war (1975-1990), in the name of “resistance” against Israel, Hezbollah, created and financed by Iran, has established itself as an essential political force in the Lebanon.
